A King Air 350i Charter Flight - KBZN to KEGE

Having made numerous changes to the Carenado King Air 350i it is now one of my favorite planes to fly. Here are some pictures of a flight from KBZN to KEGE. I tossed in a little story to go along with the pictures. Scenery is ORBX and weather is standard FSX with custom settings.

Click picture to enlarge.

Here's the King Air 350i sitting at KBZN waiting for our passengers. Rusty, my copilot, and I flew in from KBIL early this morning to pickup a group of executives going to KEGE. We are scheduled to leave at 8:00 am.

During the preflight inspection check one of the landing lights was found burnt out so we had the maintenance folks replace both landing lights. Nice that they were available this early in the morning. We carry spare bulbs for most lights as we do a lot of night flights and certain bulbs are not always readily available. The lights are working fine now.

Completed the pre-flight external checks. Rusty will remain outside until all passengers are loaded and any baggage is properly stowed.

Ok, now to maneuver into the pilot's seat and buckle up. This can be a little awkward getting seated depending on your size. I will have a little chuckle when Rusty gets in as he pushes the envelope for a pilot and has big feet.

Time to start completing cockpit pre-flight checklist items. Rusty just yelled from the back to leave his jelly filled donuts alone. Unknown to him I was already devouring one of the half-a-dozen he has sitting on the copilot's seat. I suspect he knew this as we fly together frequently.

Our filed IFR flight plan was entered into the FMS. Estimates put flight time at 1 hour and 39 minutes using an average GS of 250 kts. MFD shows an overview of the flight path to KEGE. We will be flying over Yellowstone National Park and the Gannett Peak mountain range. Everyone is onboard now and we are ready for engine start. Rusty did moan and grown a little as he wiggled into the copilot's seat. He also noticed one donut was missing and gave me a look.

Quick last check of the engine gauges and electrics. All is good and everything "feels" right (sound, vibration, yoke and pedal response). Ready for departure.

We are cleared for taxi to runway 30. One of our passengers was moving about in the cabin for some reason. Plane was stopped and the passenger requested to sit back down, buckle up, and stay there. He was apologetic and returned to his seat. Obliviously wasn't paying attention to the safety briefing given a couple of minutes ago.

Gear going up. I would rather the boss given us a business jet for this charter but must say the King Air sure handles well. Wow, a beautiful day for flying.

The King Air is climbing at 2,500 ft/min while turning to capture our flight path under ATC directions. Our cruising altitude will be 28,000 ft for this trip. That's KBZN above the plane to the right. Good bye KBZN. See you later tonight.

We are doing some cloud kissing as our climb takes us through the area cloud coverage. ATC has us constantly spotting planes around us. Lot of planes flying around this morning. Rusty offered me donut with a smile and i offered him some coffee in return.

The left engine ITT popped into the yellow and is running 15 degrees hotter than the right engine. Rusty is scanning engine gauges, settings, and various performance charts on the MFD. No obvious reason for the higher temperature but this has occurred before. Oil temperature on the left engine is normal. Throttle to the left engine was reduced slightly to bring it back into the green and a note added to the flight log for the maintenance folks.

Part II with the landing in my reply.

Part II - A King Air 350i Charter Flight - KBZN to KEGE

Turning to our new heading at Waypoint DNW. We are at FL 280. Our 6 passengers back there have quite a mess developing with their binders and paperwork spread about. They asked if several telephone calls could be made. They were told yes.

A flight progress check shows GS to be 314 kts (we got a 25 kt head wind) and our flight time so far to be almost 40 minutes with another 55 minutes to go. The currently projected flight time is 1 hour 35 minutes. Should be landing at KEGE around 9:30 am barring any major traffic delays at KEGE.

Rusty pulled out the company iPad and checked our location on the filed flight plan. We are coming up on Gannett Peak. BTW: this is the undocked moving map from Little Navmap (great freeware utility) put into a iPad frame.

That's Gannett Peak and associated mountains we just flew over. Snow covered in late July. One of our passengers, after talking to someone on the phone, indicated two vehicles would be picking them up at the plane after we park.

We passed over Waypoint BQZ several minutes ago and have throttled back and are starting to drop altitude. As we are getting close to Waypoint RLG (Transition), thought I would refresh my memory cells and scan the LDA RWY 25 approach altitudes for KEGE and double check the FMS flight plan. Everything matches up.

Making our heading change at Waypoint RLG as we continue to descend. It's going to get pretty busy in the cockpit now. Passengers were told to put their paperwork away, buckle up, and prepare for landing.

Quick look at the approach on the MFD with terrain radar active. Localizer frequency 109.75 was entered into NAV2 and will be made active shortly.

Airspeed good; 6 kt crosswind; ILS alignment and height good; full flaps; and gear down. We are ready to land.

Nice smooth touch down but missed the center line. Rusty shot me a look as to say he could have done better. Maybe but that was a very smooth landing. Reverse thrust applied.

Ground control has us taxing to the East end of the airport. They won't let us park at the Jet Center. Something about us being a turboprop. Dang, wish we could have used one of the business jets today.

Looks like finding a parking spot won't be hard over here. Rusty said he saw two vehicles pull out by the terminal and are heading our way. He thinks it's the cars expected to pick up our passengers.

Parked and passengers unloaded. The Flight Summary Report shows it took 1 hours and 37 minutes from blocks off to blocks on. We will do a post flight inspection, freshen the cabin, call the office and provide a status report, and then check-in on some friends while we wait to take this group back to KBZN later today. Rusty will be the PIC for our return flight.

Hope you enjoyed the flight.

Jim

Great post!

Enjoyed it all.

Well done, bravo! A lot of work for that flight :pilot:

David, yeah that took some work. Selecting which pictures to use and then developing a storyline to go with them took twice as long as the flight did. Thanks for the comments. Jim

Great work with the King Air flight Jim. Beautifully documented with crisp, clear shots and an interesting narrative. Top notch post in every way. :cool: :cool: :cool: :)

Larry, thanks for the nice words and glad you liked the story. It was a fun flight to do. Jim